


[SENT] and [RECEIVED]

by Hanzohara



Category: BanG Dream! Girl's Band Party! (Video Game)
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), F/F, implications of alcohol at some points, texting fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-05
Updated: 2018-11-05
Packaged: 2019-08-19 08:17:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16530845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hanzohara/pseuds/Hanzohara
Summary: It's only seven days, how bad can it be?  Well, if you're Kaoru, Misaki's absence is about as bad as pulling teeth while she's hanging upside down and on fire. Surely sending her a text to brighten both of their days wouldn't be a problem? ( Except that it's not daytime when Misaki receives the text and Kaoru has forgotten one very vital, small detail about oversea travel )





	[SENT] and [RECEIVED]

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by my good friend doing some art with the theme of texting one another while they're across the world from one another. Special thanks to you my dude.

It’s only a week.

She’ll only be away for a week. That’s all. Just a measly seven days. Not even, considering Misaki’s flight left at 5:20 yesterday evening, and they spent a good portion of that morning on a date planned to make up for the time she’d be away in America. Still, Misaki’s absence weighs heavily on Kaoru, and her mood has been at an all time low for about the entire day. Enough so that the director had pulled her aside to question her, given her usual eccentricities had been all but forgotten. Well, at least he had chosen to give her until evening rehearsals began to get out of her slump.

Still, perhaps coming to this cafe in particular wasn’t the best choice. There are a host of couples around her that talk merrily, unknowingly driving another nail further into the coffin that holds her happiness. An overreaction to some, perhaps, but she was an actor who gave her all no matter what it was. Could she really be blamed?

With a heavy sigh, Kaoru flags down the waiter for the check. She offers him the kindest smile she can muster while paying, and when he returns with both her card and the receipt, she quickly gets to her feet, undoing the top button of her blouse before heading out into the August humidity. Absently, she glances to her phone. Ah, rehearsals would kick into session in about half an hour… best to start making her way over to the theater now.

Hesitantly, she pauses at a street corner, waiting amidst a couple other pedestrians for the crosswalk to light up safely and fetches her phone from her pocket. 5:00 on the dot the screen reads, and after some deliberation, she types the password in and quickly flicks her way to the messaging app, hovering over Misaki’s profile picture. Surely she won’t mind a message from Kaoru, because the convention wouldn’t start until tomorrow and they’re surely already at their hotel by now.

[ SENT -> (Dearly Beloved) @ 5:00 P.M. ]

Well, with any luck, she’d receive some sort of message back within the hour that’d inevitably put her in a good mood for rehearsals. The showings were to be in a couple days time, so it was best to get out of this slump sooner rather than later…

Now if only she could figure out what that nagging feeling at the back of her head was, as though she had forgotten something. Not unlike going through a monologue confidently, only to be informed there was an entire line of quotation she was supposed to have read.

\- - -

[ RECEIVED -> (Thespian Lesbian) @ 1 A.M. ] : (Hello, my dearly beloved! I hope that your flight went well! I fear I already feel your absence so strongly in my heart! (frown_face) (heart_break) (heart_break) (heart_break) Enough so that the director gave me a mandatory break until this evening! Fear not, I will assuredly pick myself up before the showings, but your kind words would surely help me! (winky_face) (heart) (sparkles) ]

In retrospect, it probably isn’t nearly as loud as it sounds in the heat of the moment. It’s more jarring than anything, the sudden blast of main piano keys to Dearly Beloved, and it certainly jolts Misaki awake from any dreams she might have been having. There’s a dark haze around the edges of her vision that she can’t figure out if it is the reason for her headache, or vice versa but whichever it is, it’s a horrible combo. She shakily crawls her way to the edge of the bed, blearily looking in the direction the music came from before it peters off, leaving only a damnably bright screen with some manner of notification on it.

Her movements feel astonishingly lazy, and as her hand finally gets a semi decent grip on her phone, her head falls back down to the pillow. Uncut black hair shifts with the sudden movement and it fans out over her back, tangles and all. Her eyes squint over the screen as she begins to read before she’s interrupted by a yell from somewhere else on the floor.

“Who the hell is playing Kingdom Hearts at one in the morning!?”

There are a couple other grumbles from other parts of the rooms, and Misaki has a feeling she’ll need to apologize to some of her coworkers later today before they all spend the whole day pointing fingers. That said, she looks back to the phone to give… who?

She gives a grumble into the pillow. Ah, so Kokoro had lied when she said she hadn’t looked through her phone. Even went so far as to change some of the contact names huh? Looks like she’d be having a stern talking to the other woman once she returned to Japan. For now, there is someone else that really needs a stern talking to, and she grumbles again as she struggles once and twice over to key in the right password. Dragging her thumb over Kaoru’s profile picture, she jams it down and scans over the text Kaoru sent her.

If she were more awake, and less pissed at the fact that she was losing precious minutes she would need to make it through pretending she knew more English than she really did tomorrow, she might have been flattered. But as it stands now all she can manage is to send her a sharp text back.

[ SENT -> (Thespian Lesbian) @ 1:04 A.M. ]

Hm… perhaps she should change the name back before someone else sees and thinks she’s the one who set it as such… not that it isn’t technically correct.

[ SENT -> (S.Kao) @ 1:06 A.M. ]

[ SENT -> (S.Kao) @ 1:06 A.M. ]

With that out of the way, Misaki all but throws the phone back to the night stand and buries her face in the pillow again. Gods, she hopes she’ll end up falling asleep again, because tomorrow apparently she’s supposed to be going with the rookie sound guy to some pre-panel party with the other audio people.

\- - -

[ RECEIVED -> (Dearly Beloved) @ 5:06 P.M.]

Well that had been a big lie, and in the midst of the evening rehearsals, Kaoru had frowned visibly. She had checked almost religiously, every minute and sometimes several times a minute on her way to the theater and she had received nothing. It had worried her despite telling herself it was simply nothing. She was out with the rest of that company she worked for, they all did video games and they were a close group. They wouldn’t let anything happen to her, but even so she couldn’t help but worry.

At least now there was little need to worry. The response draws a brightness in her eyes others haven’t seen all day, but the expression quickly falls when she reads the text, and she smacks a hand to her forehead. How did she forget that! She knew she was forgetting something!

[ RECEIVED -> (Dearly Beloved) @ 5:04 P.M. ] (kaoru wtf it 1 im tired)

The time zone difference. She bit her lip in embarrassment, and a fair bit of shame. There was something almost surreal about being scolded by her girlfriend over text. Very poorly constructed text, likely due to just how early it was over there. She almost doesn’t want to read the other texts but she’ll have to if she’s going to write an apology back. Or should she even, given that it’s that early over there?

[ RECEIVED -> (Dearly Beloved) @ 5:06 P.M. ] (...that said the flight was bad. There was a screaming child, but at least Leo’s wife does real estate so they have a condo and its a comfy room they set us up in)

[ RECEIVED -> (Dearly Beloved) @ 5:06 P.M. ] (still its really fkin late kaoru its so late its tmrw. Good night or w/e it is over ther, I love you.)

Ah, she went through the trouble of writing ‘I love you’ correctly. It might seem like something small but, well, Kaoru knows what Misaki’s like in the mornings after she’s had a decent amount of sleep. And a couple times, she’s seen Misaki operating on minimal hours of sleep with the crutch of four times too many cups of coffee, of which she does not have access to right now. It really does set her heart aflutter, and she almost send an ‘I love you too’ text back out of instinct. Before she sends the text, finger hovering over the send button she stops herself, deleting it. She literally just said she’s going to sleep, probably going back to sleep, if that first text was anything to base it off of.

Off to the side, she can hear the bell sound to call all the people from their break back, and she sighs pleasantly. She was able to get a response back from Misaki, and that was good enough. Perhaps tomorrow if they were able to find out each others’ hours, they could talk some more, but for now, she’s perfectly content to leave it at ‘I love you.’

\- - -

When she wakes up at an acceptable hour, Misaki is in a far better mood. Morning preparations go smoothly despite the group’s late arrival last night, and Misaki offhandedly checks her messages to see if Kaoru had sent another. She’s equally pleased and disappointed by the fact that she didn’t but, she was probably just worried about disturbing her again. She has half a mind to send her a text, but hesitates, instead pulling up a time zone converter to check while she walks out toward the kitchen area.

Midnight huh? That surely wouldn’t be a good idea. With how much she knows they work Kaoru in the days prior to a showing, she needs all the sleep she can get. She pockets her phone, idly nodding to the half asleep guy on the couch she thinks is with the animation group and trudges on toward the kitchen.

Breakfast is a quiet affair, most people messing around on their laptops when they actually get out bed and filling the silence with tapping of keys. Eventually Shinjiro comes out, the only other sound person on the trip. He seems like a good guy, just out of university, not too far of from where Misaki is, if only by three or four years. Very timid around most of the other people here, but that’s to be expected. He was only hired on a couple months back, and they chose to bring him to the biggest event the company sends people to? Misaki would probably be nervous too, if she wasn’t so confident in the stuff she does for the games they make.

They make small conversation, but the quiet of the morning is eventually shot dead when Leo knocks on the door. Apparently he’s scheduled some kind of evening out for all of the event group to go to, some kind of dinner event with people from Bethesda and Nintendo. It’ll be good to see the Nintendo people again at least, provided it’s the same group from last year. Still she’s not overly enthused about going to this dinner instead of the department meetup, because Guess-the-Theme could heat up really fucking fast, and it was seriously funny when someone got the wrong game.

The day leading up to the dinner sees most of the staff lazing the day away in their respective corners and rooms. Eventually, probably an hour after the announcement, Misaki retreats back into her room with Shinjiro quickly following. The poor kid ( kid… it’s still weird to her that she refers to younger people like that, as if she herself wasn’t in his position a couple weeks ago ) is really nervous for the dinner and meeting all the other company employees.

They wind up doing the Guess-the-Theme game just the two of them for the sake of calming him down, and it eventually culminated in the entire condo room around the living room table, frantically shouting track names and video games in hopes of getting it right. Certainly no department party, but it does lessen the disappointment of not going to the party.

It’s around three in the afternoon, just a couple more hours until the dinner, when Misaki glances to her phone and quickly bows out of the game. Turning to a more secluded corner of the condo she quickly goes to work typing away on her phone and hitting the send button with a fond smile on her lips.

[ SENT -> (S.Kao) @ 3:22 P.M. ]

\- - -

[ RECEIVED -> (Dearly Beloved) @ 8:22 A.M. ] (Good Morning, Kaoru. Good luck at your rehearsals, I’m sure you’ll sweep them away.)

She can hear the ring of her phone alerting her to the text while she’s in the shower, and it only hastens her as she washes the conditioner from her hair. Kaoru emerges from the bathroom in a wake of steam, wrapped in a towel as she slides into slippers and crosses over to their bedside table. Just seeing the alert on the screen with the sender is enough to draw a wide smile to her lips, and she sighs pleasantly as she unlocks her phone to read the text. Further elation lights in her heart, and she’s overcome with emotion enough to reply immediately, even though she knows it’s probably time better spent preparing for rehearsals. She’s still got to get dressed, and make herself a lunch, seeing as it’s a full day dress rehearsal. And actually get there, but that all pales in the wake of talking to Misaki.

[ SENT -> (Dearly Beloved) @ 8:22 A.M.]

Once that’s all said and done she really does get to work preparing because she has a feeling if Misaki knew how far she was lagging behind on her usual schedule from daydreaming in the shower, she’d probably get a stern tongue lashing, and she’s none too keen to incite that kind of ire. Of course, there’s also the director’s ire to worry about which is arguably more dangerous but hey! There was lunch to be made, best not to get distracted by hypotheticals!

Once that’s all said and done, bag packed with the essentials, and script book in hand, she locks the apartment behind her and quickly sets off for the train station. The train ride is, thankfully, uneventful and there are less people than usual, which is odd for a Wednesday, but she can’t say she complains. It’s much easier to focus on the script when lovely girls don’t come up and try to talk with her, flirt even some of them. Kaoru admits, in spite of the princely persona she dearly loved to put on, there is a certain satisfaction in faux-offhandedly mentioning ‘my girlfriend’ in the conversations, and stunning them into what she assumes is jealous silence.

When the train arrives at her station, she’s rather quick to get up from her seat, and is the first one out onto the platform. It takes a bit of weaving through the morning crowds to get to the theater, and she’s regrettably a couple minutes late, but Kaoru manages to charm her way out of a lecture with the director. Now it’s just a matter of getting through this day, the next and then the opening night the day after.

...And if the way the day has gone slowly by is any indicator, it’s going to be a long one. Don’t get Kaoru wrong, acting is her truest passion aside from Misaki, but running through the same scenes over and over, scenes she does not play in, is just.. So, so monotonous. Not that she doesn’t have an important part in the play because she does: the deuteragonist even, but the character does not show until the second act of the performance, and they’ve been running through the first since… a brief glance to the clock on the wall.

Four hours ago.

She finds it a bit off-putting that she’s just been reciting her lines to a mirror, occasionally another of the other second act actors, for four hours. Kaoru hates to admit it, but seeing the varying levels of fleeting written in her script book is beginning to get a little annoying, if only because she cannot truly put them to test. She can’t afford to be too loud and disrupt the protagonist’s lines, of course. This probably means they’ll be focusing on her parts for the later hours, and if she were not getting paid for being here, she may have been annoyed by the fact that they did absolutely nothing with her parts, but she was still required on the set for the morning shift.

She’s still got a couple minutes before they switch out to the second act, and she can afford to slide her phone from her pocket. She swiftly taps open the messaging app and drafts a text to Misaki. After actually having checked the time difference now she’s prepared!

[ SENT -> (Dearly Beloved) @ 2:22 P.M. ]

And with that, she quickly tucks the phone back into its pocket and turns in time for the director to, finally, call scene. Looks like she’s finally up.

\- - -

[RECEIVED -> (S.Kao) @ 9:22 P.M. ] (You may not be retiring yet, my love, but I wish you a good night anyway! That way I don’t disturb you, that is, I know you’ll need all the rest for your conference tomorrow! I’ll try and tune in to your panel on my off time! I love you!)

Surprisingly enough, Misaki and the rest of her company have returned to the condo for the evening. The dinner had been successful, if you could call it that. In, of course, that everyone had been cordial with one another, and there had been plenty of talking between all the different units. It’s had been nice to catch up with Nintendo’s sound people at the very least, introduce Shinjiro to them and build some of his connections ahead of time. And of course, revert back to a language she’s far more accustomed to for the night. Dutifully though, Leo had spoken with the rest of the department heads and had called for the night to end so everyone would be their best tomorrow for all the panels.

Misaki, for one, is very glad to return to the condo and lock herself in her room after bidding everyone good night. How Kaoru did it regularly, she had no idea, but dress pants were far and away the most uncomfortable thing she’s had to wear in a long time, and the blouse that was perhaps a little bit to small for her didn’t do many other favors. At least she can take solace in the fact that the panels tomorrow, the nicest she has to do is wear a company specific t-shirt and a pair of undamaged jeans. With that thought in mind, she almost clocks out on the bed then and there, but she endeavors to roll her way to be within reach of the end table, and reaches out for the phone she set there before changing. After a determined minute or two trying to type correctly, she finally hits the send button and plugs it back into the charger before rolling over.

[SENT -> (S.Kao) @ 9:26 P.M.]

\- - -

As expected, they don’t speak for most of the day, both busy with their own business. Kaoru wakes up early, again, for the morning half of rehearsals. The only change is that she endeavors to make it on time, and ends up early by quite a while, much better than the previous day by a far margin. This way, Kaoru has the opportunity to practice on the stage alone, to actually warm up her voice instead of practically going directly into her performance with little more than quiet conversation to herself. Of course, when the director as well as the rest of the staff eventually trickle in, she cedes the stage in favor of finding that mirror again, the scriptbook rolled up and tucked into her back pocket.

Misaki’s morning fares a little different in that she doesn’t need to be awake nearly as early. No, the first signs of life in the condo isn’t even any of the occupants. It’s about nine in the morning when Leo lets himself into the condo room and begins waking everyone up. The first panel, though it isn’t theirs, starts in an hour, and it’ll be better for them if they show up to the convention center earlier rather than later.

Everyone begins, you know, actually leaving their rooms like fifteen minutes later, and they find that Leo has actually gone out of his way and delivered them some donuts. Well, that sets off no small amount chaos as everyone, Misaki included, charging to try and get a donut before they’re all gone.

To Leo’s dismay, it’s about ten when everyone is dressed and fed enough to warrant them all leaving, and someone from the rigging team almost forgets their ID card. But in the end they all board the bus with their laptops and are well on their way to the convention center. It’s a damn good thing the Maestros of Video Games panel doesn’t start until 2 P.M., because with the sheer number of other games and panels that are available, Misaki isn’t sure she’d be able to stop by all of them and make the panel.

Unfortunately, she only makes roughly half of them before she eventually runs back into Shinjiro, and she’s reminded that, yes, she needs to go make sure she doesn’t miss it..

Fortunately enough, with Japan being ahead in time zones, Kaoru wakes up around six-thirty, and all but rushes in a half asleep haze to switch her computer on in the living room, while also balancing getting ready for the day, and making sure she gets breakfast. The stream begins in little under half an hour, and Kaoru is absolutely rushing around with the sound on max in case they do some kind of introductory thing ahead of time. She shakily sends a text out to Misaki, but whether she sees it before the panel begins, she doesn’t know.

It’s finally time, and Kaoru stares at the screen with intent like never before, only breaking off so she can lift her cup of water without spilling it over the laptop.

Finally the stream pans out of it’s blank ‘we’ll be there soon’ image and shows… not Misaki. It’s some guy in suit that seems… very overdressed when he starts calling out the panellists one by one. Very American too, if the way his exaggerated bows and addition of honorifics is any indicator with the Japanese members. And then while Kaoru is in the midst of drinking the last of the water, she can hear.

“And our final panellist! Please welcome Okusawa Misaki-san.”

She damn near spits out the water, coughing as she swallows it down with some air and she all but throws the empty cup across the table. When Misaki does come across the screen, Kaoru cheers like a young girl meeting her favorite singer. Like all those kittens that would see her on her way to High School long ago… and she can’t help but chuckle at her own excitement.

Misaki, for her part, appears fairly comfortable on stage. Perhaps that’s to be attributed to all the time she spent with Hello Happy. A fact that doesn’t seem to be going unnoticed by the crowd, as they cheer wildly for her. There are a couple old fans of Hello Happy in the crowd she can see, some that have Michelle accessories, and pins of her bandmates. It was kind of flattering in a way, knowing that these people are still fans of hers, and have been since she played for Hello Happy before they retired the band. She can’t help but offer a bright smile to the group, one that Kaoru brightens at in spite of the early morning.

The cheering dies down enough that she can hear Misaki speak her thanks for introduction in a very good attempt at confident English, and then turns to the crowd proper, offering a respectful bow. Then, one of her hands comes up into a vague peace sign.

“Happy, Lucky, Smile, yeah?” Not near as cheerful as Kokoro and Hagumi, more phrased as a question for the crowd. One that gets uproarious positivity in response, even by those that don’t sport any Hello Happy merch, and Misaki can’t help but laugh quietly as she goes to take a seat next to Shinjiro.

The panel itself is also very active, very upbeat with several different questions as to personal favorite songs, games, that sort of thing, not quite what Kaoru expected of the panel, but then again, what did she know about the gaming community. They were also taking questions from the livestream, but Kaoru’s was lost among a sea of mindless babble and several other questions and she was content enough just listening in to let it slide. Finally there comes a question different from the others, one specifically for Misaki.

 

This makes Kaoru tilt her head in curiosity. It’s definitely a good question, and one that she’s interested to hear the answer to. Misaki seems to hesitate on the question for a moment, as though she was gathering her thoughts.

“Well, if I’m being honest, when I began working with Hello Happy, I… didn’t really have an interest in it, kinda wanted to leave. Our leader was… still is a bit eccentric but then again, the whole band was in some way, and I kind of got dragged into the whole mess. I got to be pretty good at it, I like to think.” That gets a collective chuckle out of the crowd, a couple shouts in affirmation. “So when Kaoru and Kanon graduated and we went on a hiatus, I really had to focus on what I wanted to do, y’know? And I really… hadn’t thought about it.” She chuckles, a bit bashfully it seems, and her hand awkwardly rubs at the back of her neck. “Working with the DJ decks for so long, I got to be good at it, got quite a few people who could vouch for me, were willing to put in a word for me, so I just kind of… built on that. Wasn’t really interested in it, or anything else really, but I was good at it, so I figured it’d be a good start. And you know? As I got to do it more and more… I came to really enjoy it. I probably wouldn’t have stayed on track with it if not for the person very close to me I happen to stay with, and I appreciate her every day for it because hey. I can come and talk at these panels, and I’m sure you all know how much people like me just love talking in front of people.”

Another round of laughs echo in the panel room, and then it’s off to the next question. Kaoru though, she pauses the livestream on her laptop to stare, to mull over what she had said. What Kaoru had basically found out. There was no question Misaki was talking about her, and it… honestly set a bunch of butterflies loose in her chest.

Misaki wasn’t a very overly affectionate person. Sure, she would send I love you and goodnight texts whenever she could, but most of the time, they were in response to Kaoru’s own. Kaoru was mostly the person who initiated the sort of things, voiced her affections any moment she could. Not to say that Misaki didn’t ever, but with how little she did it, it just made the impact of when she did that much stronger. And for her to come out and say something like that on a recording. In front of however hundred of them there were in that room, to say nothing of the live feed viewer count?

It was…. Honestly flattering, and it just reaffirmed the love she felt for Misaki tenfold. She would be sure to act on that when she returned from the convention.

Alas, even as the panel continues, Kaoru still has the final dress rehearsal before the opening night tomorrow, and she can’t afford to miss it. Even if it’ll be the last of Misaki she sees until she gets back after all of the showings finish, she has to go. With a final sigh, she shuts the laptop and quickly makes to prepare for rehearsals.

\- - -

[ SENT -> (S.Chi) @ 4:12 A.M. ] (Hey, sorry to message you later than I said, Leo wouldn’t let me leave until I said goodbye to everyone and did a shot with everyone for a job well done. I’m waiting to board the flight, so consider this the 10 hour warning.)

[ RECEIVED -> (S.Chi) @ 4:13 A.M. ] (Noted. I won’t be able to stick around after I drop you off. Do you and Kaoru have a way of getting back to your apartment after the show? Theater folk do tend to… overindulge in alcohol and other ‘festivities’ after a successful opening night.)

[ SENT -> (S.Chi) @ 4:14 A.M. ] (No need to worry, once Kaoru sees me, she won’t go anywhere near the alcohol. We’ll be able to take the train back. I’ll make sure nothing happens to her. )

[ SENT -> (S.Chi) @ 4:14 A.M. ] (Anyway, the flight just got announced for early tickets, I’ll be landing in ten hours, given decent conditions. Thank you again Chisato, I’ll send you a message when we land. )

\- - -

It’s opening night. Kaoru can’t help the way her heart hammers in excitement, it has been since she woke up this morning, and she had almost made herself sick from the excitement. And now she’s here in the theater, dressed up properly in her costume with some of the designers making last minute changes to the decorative medals she wears. The way she can hear the crowd slowly trickling in as the theater grows louder and louder. The way all of the stagehands run by, this way and that making sure everybody’s props work correctly. It’s a pleasant surprise when the designers finally leave her to her own devices and Maya approaches her. She wasn’t aware Maya still did theater technician stuff, but she explains it quickly. Just contract work for a quick buck while she’s in between jobs right now. Naturally, she doesn’t pry much beyond that, instead offering the other woman a smile and her thanks while she works on the firearm prop she holds, ensuring the sound will be every bit as heartstopping as it needs to be.

Scene one begins with a bang, and the aesthetic seems to be an instant hit with the crowd. It’s a militaristic sort of thing, a tragedy focused around the protagonist doing all the heroics in the first act, gaining popularity, that sort of thing. Then the second act focuses on Kaoru, the deuteragonist who also doubles as the supposed antagonist. It’s an interesting take, and Kaoru was eager to see where they would go with it. The second half details the antagonist building up a trap that culminates in the death of the protagonist followed by a monologue meant to paint the antagonist in a self righteous light. The third and final act was where the antagonist looks over the protagonists body, reminisces about all the secrets the protagonist had kept, leading into a ‘flashback’ sort of setting that details all the heinous things the protagonist did to deserve his death. And then at the end of the flashback, the antagonist is found by authorities, and the play ends with the antagonist being killed as the curtain falls..

She’s been waiting for this scene for so long… and finally, finally the first act ends.

When she gets on stage, she throws her heart into it, every bit of dialogue spoken as though she were in reality this character. As though she herself was outraged at the protagonist for the atrocities he had committed, the lives he had taken and the villages he had guided to ruin. Every bit of her ranting and monologuing includes the words from the script and then more, adding in her own dialogue in improvisation to further drive home the anguish she feels. And when the scene finally comes, that she can see the actor that plays the protagonist approach, when he faux-trips over the wires she had seemingly placed over on that segment of the stage and Kaoru levels the barrel of the prop firearm toward him, the crowd goes silent. And then there is an eruption of yells from the older folk, out of surprise and anguish as Kaoru pulls the trigger, and while no bullet comes out, Maya makes good on her insurance that the crack of the gun would be devastating. And oh it was. If only Misaki could have heard it, she herself, a creator of sound effects, may have very well been astounded.

It surely surprises her, and the curtain falls with the closing of the second act, to allow the stage to prepare for the final. The rest of the performance goes on without a hitch, and when the scene finally comes where three actors dressed in military uniforms raise their own guns to her, she does as her character would have, extending her own firearm to the side and dropping it as a trio of cracks fill the theater and she falls in faux-lifelessness to the ground, seeing only the blinding stage lights above, and the lowering of the red curtain as a chorus of mixed emotions sound out from the audience.

What a fleeting feeling, the purgatory in between the ending of the performance and the time before they all bow, sitting herself up on the ground as a couple stage hands come to get aid. She gets to her feet with their help, and Maya is quickly on her way over, taking the gun so she doesn’t have to lug it around, and offers a smile and congratulations on an astounding performance.

The curtains rise again, and Kaoru stands beside the man playing the protagonist, offering a deep bow and murmured words of thanks as the play ends, and people begin to rise from their seats.

It’s as Kaoru has changed out of the costume, back into her comfortable clothes and is preparing to ride out with the others to the bar down the street to celebrate that she hears a chime from her phone. With furrowed brows, she follows the last guy out to where the audience sat while pulling her phone out. A text from Misaki? Odd, she shouldn’t be awake right now.

She raises her eyes to the guy she was following to ask for him to hold on for a moment, but he is gone around the corner, and Kaoru almost drops her phone. There at the end of the ramp stands Misaki herself. Looking a little worse for wear sure, hair done up into a messy ponytail and certainly not wearing anything fancy, but she’s there… not in America, a nine hour trip away, and some ten-off time zones away, seventeen or something hours in the past. And she’s got a small bouquet or roses, surely for her as congratulations but she cannot believe it.

Incredulously, she blinks once, twice, even thrice to try and clear her mind of the illusion, but when the phone in her hand buzzes once again to remind her she has an unread message, and she looks down, a goofy smile finds its way onto her lips, and she just might feel a tear or two building up in her eyes.

[ RECEIVED -> (Dearly Beloved) @ 10:33 P.M. ] (As I thought… you really did blow it out of the water. A really astounding performance Kaoru. I love you.)


End file.
